I received this eyewitness report from a person manning the polls in Virginia.
I showed up for my first shift handing out ballots and showing the flag
at about 8:50 and left at 10:15. Voting at that hour was very light,
but many federal workers showed up before the doors opened at 6:00 AM,
and through the first hour the line was out the door. By 8, I'm told,
waiting was zero or just a few minutes. This is typical of this
precinct, no matter what the total voters are. There will be another
pulse, probably larger, between around 4:30 or 5:00 PM and closing time
at 7:00pm.
The precinct offered two ways to vote: touch screen and optical scan.
We urged all Dems to choose the paper ballot optically scanned as that's
a far more secure way to do things.
We did have some trouble. There were 4-6 Democratic workers, including
an outside lawyer plus an inside watcher and inside lawyer. The
Republicans sent one middle-aged woman with a hard looking face. She
approached every voter and offered a Republican sample ballot. If the
voter turned her down & said he/she wanted to vote Democratic, the GOPer
got mad and began haranguing the Democrat. We took names and phone
numbers. the 7 year old son of one such victim began to cry when the
GOPer said that she was very upset, very frightened for the boy if Obama
won.
Finally the chief precinct worker came out and looked. Then the
school's security officer chatted with the gal who was told she could
hand out ballots and chat but could not intimidate. She asked if she
could walk further away from the voting place and continue. "No. Not
on school property."
When she wouldn't take that for an answer the school principal sent for
the County's police. When I left two officers were reading her the riot
act and demanding that she either quit voter suppression, or they would
remove her from the site. But shortly after I left to get some rest
before going back in the PM.
So anyway, voter suppression tactics are not limited to lower class and
black neighborhoods. The median income in Great Falls, VA is pushing
hard on $75K, maybe higher. Our lawyer said that 4 years ago at the
same polling place there had been genuine suppression going on inside
the polling place by Republican poll watchers.
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1 comment:
No question, attempts at voter intimidation are real. And it's great that they actually called the police.
I just finished my 8 hour shift as a poll watcher for the Obama campaign. We had no problems at all, other than things like address changes, absentee ballots that didn't arrive (and they were allowed to vote after signing an affidavit that they had not voted absentee).
This was in an upper middle class, probablty majority Republican district. But there was nothing even suggestive of intimidation or irregularities.
I just wish the rest of the country could have run as well.
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